Anam Cara [Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition]: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

By John O'Donohue, Michael D. Higgins and Pat O'Donohue

“In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, you will find John a “soul friend” on your own journey through life, offering support and solace, clarity, and consciousness—expanding narratives that invite you to experience relationships with people, nature, and even your inner world in new ways that nurture well-being and resilience in these challenging times.” —Daniel J. Siegel, MD, Neuropsychiatrist and New York Times Bestselling Author

A special twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the classic work of Celtic spirituality and mysticism by beloved poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue, with a new introduction by the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, an afterword by the late author’s brother, Pat O'Donohue, and insightful material from O'Donohue's circle of close friends.

In this revered classic, John O’Donohue excavates themes of friendship, belonging, solitude, creativity and the imagination, among many others. Widely recognized for bringing Celtic spirituality into modern dialogue, his unique insights from the ancient world speak with urgency for our need to rediscover the thresholds of the soul. 

With lyrical wisdom and fluency, O'Donohue encourages pathways of discovery to come home to the natural rhythm in ourselves in sacred connection with one another and the landscapes we inhabit. This timeless collection nourishes the heart and elevates the spirit. It is "a book to read and reread forever.” (Irish Times)

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9780063270596

John O'Donohue

John O'Donohue (1956-2008) was a poet, philosopher, and scholar and a native Gaelic speaker from County Clare, Ireland. He was awarded a PhD in Philosophical Theology from the University of Tübingen, with post-doctoral study of Meister Eckhart. John's numerous international bestselling books include Anam Cara, Beauty, Eternal Echoes, and the beloved To Bless the Space Between Us (published as Benedictus in Europe), among many others, guiding readers through the landscape of the Irish imagination. 

Book preview

Beannacht

For Josie

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the gray window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colors,

indigo, red, green

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the curach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

Dedication

In memory of my father, Paddy O’Donohue,

who worked stone so poetically,

and my uncle Pete O’Donohue,

who loved the mountains

And my aunt Brigid

In memory of John, Willie, Mary,

and Ellie O’Donohue,

who emigrated and now rest in American soil

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Beannacht

Dedication

Foreword

Prologue

1. The Mystery of Friendship

Light Is Generous

The Celtic Circle of Belonging

The Human Heart Is Never Completely Born

Love Is the Nature of the Soul

The Umbra Nihili

The Anam Ċara

Intimacy as Sacred

The Mystery of Approach

Diarmuid and Gráinne

Love as Ancient Recognition

The Circle of Belonging

The Kalyana-Mitra

The Soul as Divine Echo

The Wellspring of Love Within

The Transfiguration of the Senses

The Wounded Gift

In the Kingdom of Love, There Is No Competition

2. Toward a Spirituality of the Senses

The Face Is the Icon of Creation

The Holiness of the Gaze

The Infinity of Your Interiority

The Face and the Second Innocence

The Body Is the Angel of the Soul

The Body as Mirror of the Soul

For the Celts, the Visible and the Invisible Are One

The Children of Lir

A Spirituality of Transfiguration

The Senses as Thresholds of Soul

The Eye Is Like the Dawn

Styles of Vision

Taste and Speech

Fragrance and Breath

True Listening Is Worship

The Language of Touch

Celtic Sensuousness

3. Solitude Is Luminous

The World of the Soul Is Secret

The Danger of Neon Vision

To Be Born Is to Be Chosen

The Celtic Underworld as Resonance

To Transfigure the Ego—to Liberate the Soul

There Is No Spiritual Program

The Body Is Your Only Home

The Body Is in the Soul

To Be Natural Is to Be Holy

The Dancing Mind

Beauty Likes Neglected Places

Thoughts Are Our Inner Senses

Ascetic Solitude

Silence Is the Sister of the Divine

The Crowd at the Hearth of the Soul

Contradictions as Treasures

The Soul Adores Unity

Toward a Spirituality of Noninterference

One of the Greatest Sins Is the Unlived Life

4. Work as a Poetics of Growth

The Eye Celebrates Motion

To Grow Is to Change

The Celtic Reverence for the Day

The Soul Desires Expression

Pisreoga

Presence as Soul Texture

Weakness and Power

The Trap of False Belonging

Work and Imagination

Spontaneity and Blockage

The Role Can Smother

Sisyphus

The Salmon of Knowledge

The False Image Can Paralyze

The King and the Beggar’s Gift

Heartful Work Brings Beauty

5. Aging: The Beauty of the Inner Harvest

Time as a Circle

The Seasons in the Heart

Autumn and the Inner Harvest

Transience Makes a Ghost of Experience

Memory: Where Our Vanished Days Secretly Gather

Tír na n-Óg: The Land of Youth

Eternal Time

The Soul as Temple of Memory

Self-Compassion and the Art of Inner Harvesting

To Keep Something Beautiful in Your Heart

The Bright Field

The Passionate Heart Never Ages

The Fire of Longing

Aging: An Invitation to New Solitude

Loneliness: The Key to Courage

Wisdom as Poise and Grace

Old Age and the Twilight Treasures

Old Age and Freedom

6. Death: The Horizon Is in the Well

The Unknown Companion

The Faces of Death in Everyday Life

Death as the Root of Fear

Death in the Celtic Tradition

When Death Visits . . .

The Caoineadh: The Irish Mourning Tradition

The Soul That Kissed the Body

The Bean Sí

A Beautiful Death

The Dead Are Our Nearest Neighbors

The Ego and the Soul

Death as an Invitation to Freedom

Nothingness: A Face of Death

Waiting and Absence

Birth as Death

Death Transfigures Our Separation

Are Space and Time Different in the Eternal World?

The Dead Bless Us

Afterword

Acknowledgments

P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*

About the Author

About the Book

Read On

Also by John O’Donohue

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Anam Ċara

So many people were influenced by John O’Donohue and in so many different ways. I was present at the launch of nearly all his books and, indeed, I may have spoken at a few of those launches. It was a privilege, and it was always a great pleasure to do so. I am always moved, even after all the years, as I read the dedications he wrote to Sabina and to me. I remember John’s use of the word friendship, its importance to him. In my mind, I can encounter again his marvelous presence as he leaned over to write these words of dedication and the energy it generated between us, an energy of friendship. I recall the warmth of such occasions, the level of thought to which people were invited, and John’s generosity of himself in the presentations.

There are few days I don’t think of John O’Donohue. I can understand this as it is one of the principles of Celtic life and spirituality that he so regularly invoked that we continue to communicate within a community that includes those who are, in a bodily sense, living with us and those whose spirits are now those with whom we may relate. To enjoy John’s friendship was a great gift. I recall his visits to me, particularly during a period when I was in hospital. I always knew when he was in the room even if I had drifted off. His was a presence that did not need the introduction of words.

We live by images, consciously and instinctively. The image of the spiral and the circle are what surrounds the Burren landscape of John’s home; linearity and its errors are stuff of a later hubris in both spirituality and science.

As I was putting these words together, in a splendid sense of serendipity (as Thomas Merton might have put it) out of Benedictus fell an extract by Bernie Ní Fhlatharta (a journalist of a West of Ireland generation that allowed themselves to quote from speech if they felt it was justified) from my tribute in Galway Cathedral at what was a magnificent send-off for John:

John O’Donohue’s presence filled one with hope. His books moistened the spiritual ground that had dried for many in Ireland, Europe, the United States, indeed all over the world, offering as he did, a compassion based on understanding and a recognition of the creative in every living being.

His two collections of poetry, his Echoes of Memory and Conamara Blues [sic], delivered their spiritual and luminous wisdom in shorelines that made a form of music, or offered accessible condensed suggestions for reflection in the style of Meister Eckhart.

In Anam Ċara, Eternal Echoes, Divine Beauty and Benedictus, John created a legacy that will pass on to future generations.

Most important of all, these books, during the all-too-short life John shared with us, have found and will continue to find, their way to those most in need of their affirming message.

These books had as threads running through them an evocation and a sensitive tracing of the human condition following the themes of longing and belonging. His contribution as a prophet will continue. His work as a writer and poet will endure.

His spirit will always be with those he loved: his family, his partner, but with all of us too, for he has been lodged in all of us in a way that can never be erased, connected to us all in our common stardust.

I was so pleased that a comprehensive celebration of John’s life and work was undertaken four years ago and that his influence in the world continues. In fact, Prince Charles reflected after his visit to the Burren that he kept thinking of his conversations with John, and he asked me if I knew any John O’Donohues to please let him know. But if we are all unique, John O’Donohue was not only unique but special.

The longest discussion I had with John was during a period in which he was preparing to give an address to Professor John M. Dillon’s Plato seminar at Trinity College, Dublin. It was on the topic Possibilities. I had the great pleasure of hearing the earliest versions as well as the amended versions and later to receive a copy of the final lecture as delivered. It tells one so much of John and his intellectual pursuits.

Our conversation began with his suggesting the importance of imagination and one of its tools: memory. While memory is our great assistant in recovering a sense of our earlier life, imagination has within its range—sedimented, as it were—not only that which we can recall but all of what we felt was possible from past times of dream and hope and fleeting beauty; that memory could not rely on what was recalled through the visual sense alone, for there has been a tendency to privilege the visual at the cost of the contribution to wonder of the other senses. Along the way, the place of beauty, its sources and composition, its ephemeral nature—we fitted that, too, into the conversation. It makes me think again of that famous remark attributed to Josie, his mother, when asked about how John was doing, she said: Beauty has him nearly killed.

In my own poem, "Of Possibility," in memory of John O’Donohue, I had this image of John in mind:

From that wider space

that is imagination,

is made possible

a visual beauty

that dazzles and ensnares.

Deep in that space lies too,

in unreleased expectancy,

versions of a world unborn,

sending shards of life and color

that make an invitation

to something truly human.

They lodge in memory,

making an inheritance

of possibility not always realized.

And in that site yielded up by memory

to spirit at the end,

it is these shafts

and unrealized suggestions

that endure,

at the end,

making a rich legacy

of possibility.

One can easily see how the essential project for the future of humanity—the reconnection of ecology, economy, society, and culture—flows from John O’Donohue’s writing, how relevant it is today when we are challenged to turn the documented agreed words of (Member) States on responding to climate change and sustainability into real efforts and achievements.

We will be discussing, in the years to come, not only the contribution of science, but the ground shared between a science that respects serendipity and a spirituality or theology that values the possibility and life of the new question—one that eschews a battle of certainties, but I am sure we will also be discussing the consequences of its abuse. Science has seduced many, not least those who have replaced wonder with what they envisaged as the marvels of technology.

It is in the space of wonder, wisdom, and often in the silences contributed by nature that we are gifted with the capacity of recovering such a healing and a wholeness (so beautifully celebrated in Anam Ċara) that we may have lost in a civilization that insists on the utility of meaningless dualism. Knowledge does not require a dismissal of all that is not easily quantifiable. Believing as I do in the heavy price we have paid to what I have called elsewhere and often the Cartesian fallacy, what I sense in John O’Donohue’s work is both a longing and a belief that a recovery from this damaging dualism is achievable: belief in a recovered sense of symmetry—a symmetry that is available to us by being able to respect the renewing capacity of nature.

While there are many who have gained much personal solace from John’s books, I believe that there is no suggestion in them that one should be satisfied solely with a pursuit of what is of value in the remaking of the self in a personal sense.

I believe that all of John’s books, taken together, with Anam Ċara as their notable beginning, are making the case for a world that is available, indeed essential, to be born—one in which all experiences are valid. What is most valuable in John’s philosophy is that those that are shared and woven from the threads of experience and nature create a tapestry that is community.

John was adamant that the offering of a blessing should never be confined to a priestly order—that it was a practice deep in the best of tradition—so may I end by wishing every blessing on all for now and in the future.

Beannachtaí oraibh go léir, anois agus sna laethanta amach romhainn!

Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland

Dublin, Ireland, Spring 2022

Prologue

It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world. Through the opening of the mouth, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on television, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other’s sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the world together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

Humans are new here. Above us, the galaxies dance out toward infinity. Under our feet is ancient earth. We are beautifully molded from this clay. Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us. In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires toward reflection. Words are the oblique mirrors that hold your thoughts. You gaze into these word-mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging, and shelter. Behind their bright surfaces is the dark and the silence. Words are like the god Janus, they face outward and inward at once.

If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person, or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and only threshold of an inner world. This wholesomeness is holiness. To be holy is to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come to balance in you. Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is an artist in this primal and inescapable sense. Each one of us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and shapes a unique world.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace. Nowhere else is there such intimate and frightening access to the mysterium. Friendship is the sweet grace that liberates us to approach, recognize, and inhabit this adventure. This book is intended as an oblique mirror in which you might come to glimpse the presence and power of inner and outer friendship. Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and universe. The human journey is a continuous act of transfiguration. If approached in friendship, the unknown, the anonymous, the negative, and the threatening gradually yield their secret affinity with us. As an artist, the human person is permanently active in this revelation. The imagination is the great friend of the unknown. Endlessly, it invokes and releases the power of possibility. Friendship, then, is not to be reduced to an exclusive or sentimental relationship; it is a far more extensive and intensive force.

The Celtic mind was neither discursive nor systematic. Yet in their lyrical speculation the Celts brought the sublime unity of life and experience to expression. The Celtic mind was not burdened by dualism. It did not separate what belongs together. The Celtic imagination articulates the inner friendship that embraces Nature, divinity, underworld, and human world as one. The dualism that separates the visible from the invisible, time from eternity, the human from the divine, was totally alien to them. Their sense of ontological friendship yielded a world of experience imbued with a rich texture of otherness, ambivalence, symbolism, and imagination. For our sore and tormented separation, the possibility of this imaginative and unifying friendship is the Celtic gift.

The Celtic understanding of friendship finds its inspiration and culmination in the sublime notion of the anam ċara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul; ċara is the word for friend. So anam ċara means soul friend. The anam ċara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam ċara, your friendship cut across all convention and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. Taking this as our inspiration, we explore interpersonal friendship in chapter 1. Central here is the recognition and awakening of the ancient belonging between two friends. Since the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process, love is the continuous birth of creativity within and between us. We will explore longing as the presence of the divine and the soul as the house of belonging.

In chapter 2, we will outline a spirituality of friendship with the body. The body is your clay home, your only home in the universe. The body is in the soul; this recognition confers a sacred and mystical dignity on the body. The senses are divine thresholds. A spirituality of the senses is a spirituality of transfiguration. In chapter 3, we will explore the art of inner friendship. When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected inner wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of the inner landscape.

In chapter 4, we will reflect on work as a poetics of growth. The invisible hungers to become visible, to express itself in our actions. This is the inner desire of work. When our inner life can befriend the outer world of work, new imagination is awakened and great changes take place. In chapter 5, we will contemplate our friendship with the harvest time of life, old age. We will explore memory as the place where our vanished days secretly gather and acknowledge that the passionate heart never ages. Time is veiled eternity. In chapter 6, we will probe our necessary friendship with our original and ultimate companion, death. We will reflect on death as the invisible companion who walks the road of life with us from birth. Death

Reviews for Anam Cara [Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition]

[kwskultety · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Inspiring, uplifting, and beautiful. Great for christians and wiccans alike....

[erwinkennythomas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John O’ Donohue’s Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom draws on poetry, Hegelian philosophy, and the mysticism of 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart. O’ Donohue was a successful Irish author, theologian, and philosopher. He popularized this book that was first published in 1997 on Celtic spirituality. In 2000, O’ Donohue left the priesthood in Ireland and found a receptive audience for his work in the United States. At the age of 52, he died in his sleep while holidaying near Avignon, France.Motifs of this work showed where he was raised in the area of Connemara, Ireland. He spelled out the concepts of the soul. One’s body was viewed to be within the soul. This attachment meant that the soul was bound in a circular way that consisted of three dimensions of the heavens above, the landscape on the middle realm, and the underworld within the depths of the earth.O’ Donohue examined the importance of the senses – the benefits of sight, the reality of hearing, and the presence of touch. He explained the reasons for the seasons – spring, summer, autumn, winter. For example, when is the best time to start a career? When should people harvest the fruits that were sowed? Why is autumn so significant in their lives? And how should people sustain themselves during the gloomiest days of the winter months?An overall theme presented in this work is knowing oneself. The author illustrated how this was essential if people were to live successfully. He stressed that understanding begins when they cultivate their mind, body, and soul. O’ Donohue saw this as the only way by which individuals could begin to be of help to others. Other discussions centered around the importance of time and space.Anam Cara is the Gaelic word for “soul-friend” that resonated throughout O’ Donohue’s writings. It’s a self-help manual for people who are seeking new ways of exploring their spiritual life. With his pronunciations there are some scriptural citations, and other Christian practices reminiscent of O’ Donohue’s experiences as a former Catholic priest with a doctorate in political philosophy.

[patl_53 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Here's the thing with O'Donohue. He writes mystically and poetically. I'd rather hear him speak than read his words. Actually, reading it on Kindle is a weird, weird trip. I think this is one of those books that you have to have in print, in hand, with a cup of coffee or a pint of porter at hand, sitting on the deck overlooking a natural scene.

I LOVE the guy, I just find that it's hard to read this particular book in the form that I have it.

[al9g · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is so much depth to this book that I hardly know where to begin. The insights into the spirituality of the five senses alone is worth the read. For those who might be seeking deeper spiritual development and certainly for those who are students of Celtic spirituality, this book is a must read - O'Donohue explores Celtic wisdom and spiritual understandings in light of modern understandings of Christian spirituality to give insight into the way the two come together and the depths of the spiritual traditions with the Celtic practices of Christian spirituality.

[kraysaulis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'll end up going back and reading this book, and quoting this book, over and over again.

[fhc_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

John O'Donohue's Irish brogue eloquently sharing Celtic wisdom in prayers, blessings and benediction and God is revealed from an intuitive perspective.

8 cds covers much information but also nicely breaks up the material into digestible sized sections for contemplative reflection. Make yourself a cuppa and settle in for enjoyable audio 'reading' !

[irishkitsune · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a truly insightful book. The title translates as "soul friend," and Donohue talks in-depth about ancient Celtic wisdom and spirituality. If you have interest in any spirituality at all, not just shamanism, I really recommend this book.

[mckait · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that touched me deeply. To put it very simply, it is a book about friendship. That "soul friend" that each of us long for and yet so few of us are fortunate to claim. This is a story of humanity and yearning. It is a story of love and loss and spirituality. O'Donohue writes in a poetic and compassionate way about life.

[lunaverse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(From my review on Amazon in 1998.)Each sentence is a ponderable morsel.Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom is truly a work of art. Over the past three years, I have been working on discovering myself through self-help books, 12-step programs, religious study, and personal introspection. This book summed up everything I have learned (the hard way) during this time, and presented it in a beautiful package that was invigorating and thought-provoking to read. It was a pure joy. I began reading it in January, and have only just finished it last night, because each sentance was a ponderable morsel. Sometimes I would read a phrase five times over in order to fully grasp and apply it's meaning to my life. This is not a 70 mph trip through the McDonald's drive-thru, this is a seven course meal in Vienna, and every bite demands that you hold it in your mouth to savor it.Anam Cara is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I plan to read it again in a year or so, because I know I will get new things out of it. I am already loaning it to a friend, and have a couple of others in mind I'd like to loan it to. I can't keep this from the ones I love.

[maggie_foote · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I rarely read spiritual books, but I'm glad I read this one. O'Donohue writes lyrical prose, telling us to have compassion, to find our soul friends, to sink into the bliss of solitude, and to find our way to the other side. This from a man who has done scholarly work on Hagel. I recommend this book to anyone seeking peace and calm in the turbulence of life.